Album No. 3, and Drake shows no signs of fading. In fact, the Toronto rapper appears to be settling in for the long haul. Hip hop has changed since his game-changing 2010 debut, Thank Me Later, and to his credit, Drake has continued to change, too. “Evolve” might be a better word; while retaining the “emo-rap” basics that once set him apart — rhyming about relationship troubles with disarming candour — he toughens up, dropping credible battle rhymes on a few tracks. He takes a page from Kanye’s book, chronicling the trials and tribulations of being rich, famous and great, while keeping his trademark personal tone. It all adds up to make Drake the most well-rounded and relatable chart-topping rapper of the moment.

For his first full album of original material in a decade, Sting cherry-picks from 40 songs about the demise of Newcastle’s shipbuilding industry, which he hopes to present as a Broadway musical next year. Most surprisingly, the man whose solo work has so often proved difficult to love seems more than up to the task. Even out of their narrative context, many of the song-stories resonate easily, and the best of them are even poignant. But the robust melodies are the real draw: mixing Celtic instrumentation and show-tune structures, most of them quickly latch on to your memory. His unrelenting use of a Geordie accent might cause a few eyes to roll, but on the whole, Sting finally seems to have the wind at his back.

Podworthy: The Night the Pugilist Learned How to Dance

Bernard Perusse

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Elton John

The Diving Board

Mercury/Universal Music Canada

Rating: 3 stars out of 5

It’s heartening to see Sir Elton go back to basics with a small core band, but advance reports that he and Bernie Taupin had come up with a return to the standard of their early twisted Americana classics turn out to be exaggerated. Most of the songs do have a country, blues and gospel feel. And yes, John’s piano hooks and playing are as elegant and delightful as they ever were. All to the good. But after a strong opening half, the T-Bone Burnett-produced disc sags and never recovers, limping to the end after what seems like a very long hour. Home Again and the title track, for example, drag on as if they will never end. Some judicious editing would not have been unwelcome.

Podworthy: A Town Called Jubilee

Bernard Perusse

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Cher

Closer to the Truth

Warner Bros.

Rating: 3 stars out of 5

We’ll avoid the jokes about plastic implants and “truth.” How “real” is this? Cher’s first album in an age features a cover photo of a 67-year-old snow angel, coy double entendres like Take It Like a Man, a shimmering dance-floor swooner and a bunch of club pounders. Taylor Swift has a Red, so Cher is having one, and when she covers a Miley Cyrus song (I Hope You Find It), we have entered a strange land. There’s scary banjo-stomp disco in I Walk Alone, and with Sirens, the weepers have floated in. Fear the weepers. There are 13 songwriters on the first four tracks. So yeah, it’s kind of like a miracle, and kind of sad and kind of heroic that it even exists.

Podworthy: I Walk Alone

Mark Lepage

Cher performs April 25 at the Bell Centre. Ticket details to be announced.

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Kings of Leon

Mechanical Bull

RCA

Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

When you get a bit of “rock star,” you want a whole lot more “rock star.” And once you’ve learned how to write the massive songs that win arenas, it’s very hard to forget to do that until you can’t do it anymore. So Mechanical Bull can be a step forward and another two sideways as Kings of Leon threaten to enter their Goats Head Soup / It’s Only Rock and Roll phase. Rock City is simple and calculated and fun. The supple choogle-cluck of Family Tree is fun but edgeless (read on, though). Don’t Matter rocks, and Beautiful War is a creative take on a semi-ballad, their With or Without You. And so it goes: Tonight is epic in the U2 way we’ve heard before, and I swear that’s Edge in On the Chin. All resolutely neo-mainstream. All miles from Aha Shake Heartbreak.

Seventeen years drifted past like a dream. And there is dream logic in that, when your sound is all about suspension and the baked-in melancholy and mortality of that. Mazzy Star returns after Among My Swan in 1996 (!), and In the Kingdom and California shimmer like underwater sunshine. It’s a sound that is equal parts innate elemental woozery and gauzy echo-ambient production. No, it’s never sounded like Dave Roback or Hope Sandoval herniated themselves with heavy musical lifting. I mean, Common Burn is a brushstroke of harmonica and glockenspiel against the deliquescent sunset of Sandoval’s vocal. The immortal Bert Jansch is in Spoon. It is not transformational and it has not transformed in the intervening years. And frankly, like the pretty girl who gets all the attention at the party, it doesn’t need to.

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